


Three Times Ray Did Not Like Halloween, and One Time He Did.

by Brigantine



Category: due South
Genre: M/M, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-07
Updated: 2012-10-07
Packaged: 2017-11-15 19:17:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/530769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brigantine/pseuds/Brigantine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ray does not trust Halloween, or really most of October.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Times Ray Did Not Like Halloween, and One Time He Did.

**Author's Note:**

> I did this on Halloween of last year, and kind of forgot to archive it here. Tch. Silly me.

The Kolchaks' attic was dim, cobwebby, and crowded with a vast assortment of the sort of debris left behind from decades of having reared a large family in the same house. Boxes, trunks and teetering piles of discarded items had been filed by date - that is, whatever had been slung into the attic last was piled closest to the attic door. All of it had long been covered by a heavy layer of dust.

Rummaging at the opposite end of the musty room from Fraser, Ray, who had been coughing and sniffling since they ascended the attic stairs after lunch, suddenly gave a loud, cathartic sneeze.

"Bless you," Fraser said.

Ray blew his nose into a tissue. "Thank you. I don't get it, Frase. Most of this stuff is busted. Why don't they just--Hey! There it is! I got it! Ow! Ow, ow, Fraser! Fraser, ow, it's got me, it bit me! The little bastard bit me!"

Ray swatted at his assailant, knocking over first a broken hobby horse, and then a box that had once contained copier paper. The aging string around the box snapped, and a jumble of dolls scattered over the already crowded attic floor. A half dozen disheveled Barbies smiled vacantly up at the ceiling while a Betsy Wetsy cried for its mother.

Fraser dodged through the attic obstacle course toward Ray, who flailed and yelped, raising fresh clouds of dust and dislodging a small avalanche of The Adventures of Nancy Drew, Girl Detective. The little brown bat they'd been chasing cheeped angrily, fluttered past Fraser, and disappeared up the tattered skirts of a fairy queen costume draped over a battered chest of drawers with one drawer missing.

"Ray. Ray!" Fraser made a grab at Ray's windmilling arms. "Ray, you're tangled up in the line from Mr. Kolchak's fishing rod. The hook's come loose from the--"

"Ow, Fraser, I've been bit by a bat! Now I'm gonna turn into a vampire, and they'll have to shoot me like they did Old Yeller!"

"--bail on the reel. Will you please stop thrashing, or the barb will set, and then we'll have to push the whole hook out through your thumb!"

Ray stilled and stared at Fraser, wide-eyed with horror. "The whole--?"

Fraser seized Ray's left hand. "Probably not the entire hook, but if the barb has penetrated the skin, the best remedy will be to push the hook out through the pad of your thumb--"

"Ow, no!" Ray attempted to jerk his hand back, but Fraser had a firm grip on Ray's wrist. 

"Ray, please, quit squirming, and let me just..." He pulled the hook back out gently, leaving a small well of blood behind on the dusty swell of Ray's thumb. "Honestly Ray, you made less fuss than this the last time you got shot."

"Gettin' shot doesn't turn you into the bloodsucking non-dead, Fraser." 

"First," Fraser corrected, "they had to shoot Old Yeller because he had contracted rabies, not vampirism. Second, you were not bitten, you were stabbed. When was your last tetanus booster?"

"Three years. You sure about that not turning into a vampire thing? 'Cause there is such a thing as vampire bats. I saw 'em on a National Geographic special, and National Geographic does not lie! Eeewww, Fraser, what are you _doing?_ "

Fraser realized with a jolt that he had thoughtlessly put Ray's thumb into his mouth, in order to lick off the dust and the slowly oozing blood. He immediately let go of Ray's thumb and stepped backward, awash with embarrassment and nearly giddy from the tang of Ray's blood on his tongue. "Oh. Oh dear!"

Blushing, Ray wiped his damp thumb on his dust-streaked shirt. "Jeez, Frase, you don't know where I've been!"

"I'm terribly sorry, Ray. I don't know what I was thinking. I just, well, if it were my thumb, of course I'd--"

"Yeah whatever." Ray regarded him with sudden amusement. "Hey, maybe you're the vampire, huh?"

Fraser sighed, grateful enough to replace utter mortification with mild vexation. "Ray, there is no such... Look, vampire bats are from South America. The North American brown bat does not drink blood. It's an insectivore. In fact," Fraser added, "its favorite food is mosquitoes. Therefore, in a way, one might claim that the little brown bat is an anti-vampire bat."

Ray eyed him doubtfully.

"Because mosquitoes drink blood," Fraser explained hopefully. "And spread disease."

"I am going downstairs and get a Band-Aid for this thing," Ray declared. "You let me know when you and the killer bat make friends, and then we can swing by the church and promise the Kolchaks that no, there are no paranormal hijinks going on in their attic. After that we can finally go get some dinner, on account of I am starving and needing pie to restore my strength. Also I can call my mother and remind her that being a cop does not make me an expert in ghost-busting and/or bat removal."

"I don't mind helping your mother's friends," Fraser offered. "Consider it a sort of community service, an outreach, if you will--"

Ray snapped something sour in Polish and stomped down the attic stairs.

"Ah. Very well. I'll just... " Fraser turned toward the fairy queen costume, which rustled faintly with the furtive movements of the fugitive bat. Fraser estimated that if he were to carefully gather up the faded taffeta skirt, twisting shut both the waist and the hem, he ought to be able to get down the stairs and outside to release the little creature, ruffled but unharmed into the gathering evening. 

"Stanley Raymond Kowalski is," Fraser informed the bat conversationally, "the most _contradictory_ man, by which I mean that any given day I often find myself veering, within the space of five minutes, from the intense desire to thump him upside his head to a desperate wish to... well, to do something to him not at all like that. Sometimes I wish he would simply _stand still_ for a moment." Fraser huffed resignedly. "Never mind."

Muffled inside the costume, the little brown bat squeaked peevishly.

"Yes," Fraser sympathized, "I realize that none of this was your fault. I'll be sure to remind the Kolchaks that the screen over their attic window is in need of some repair."

*****

Just shy of midnight on October 30 found Fraser and Diefenbaker picking their way carefully through the darkness of Maitlin's Ship Repair and Dry Dock, east of Pier 12. 

They discovered Ray dangling at tip-toe from a large steel hook attached to a heavy block and tackle a few yards to the left of a vast luxury yacht under repair named "Misty for Me." The end of the long rope binding Ray had been anchored to the yacht's foredeck, as far as Fraser could tell in the poor lighting. He decided it might be easier to simply cut Ray free, assuming they weren't walking straight into a trap.

Ray had been blindfolded with a red rag tied behind his head, and his wrists bound with thick loops of rough hemp rope. The yellow light from a single battered workshop lamp hanging nearby fell over him, shadowing his face but setting out the sharp angles of his hair, and the smoother contours of his shoulders, the lean lines of his arms and back, and the clear fact that Ray had been stripped to his under shorts. Fraser shivered within his warm coat. The Chicago docks in October were no fit place for a man wearing naught but blue cotton boxers. 

Next to him Diefenbaker shifted, whined softly, and then before Fraser could argue broke from cover, bolting headlong for Ray. Fraser bit back an exclamation and hoped for the best.

Ray's head tilted up immediately, no doubt at the sharp scrabble of Dief's claws on the dirty concrete, and then Dief, overcome with delight at finding Ray whole and alive, pressed his nose against the soft back of Ray's left knee and whuffled a happy greeting.

"YAAAAAGH!" Ray thrashed like a marlin on a gaffe.

Fraser made an irritated noise, and rushed to the rescue. "Ray, are you all right? Is anyone else here?"

Ray turned blindly toward him. "Whazzat? Fraser? Did Dief just lick my knee? Oh thank God it's you, please tell me half the fuckin' precinct ain't here to see me."

Fraser untangled the red blindfold and Ray blinked rapidly at him, their faces near enough to breathe one another's air. "Oh hey," Ray smiled anxiously.

Fraser groped for his knife. 

Ray squirmed, trying to peer around the large, dark room. "I was startin' to lose my marbles in here, Frase. It's quiet, you know, that kind of creepy quiet that isn't really quiet, 'cause there's creaking and groaning and splashing and--"

Fraser took hold of Ray's elbow to hold him still as he began to saw at Ray's bonds with his hunting knife. "I'm sorry, Ray. I warned Diefenbaker not to surprise you, but wolves are not known for their patience."

Dief barked in protest. 

"Yes, I understand you were merely concerned for the well-being of an important member of our pack, but under the circumstances a little discretion--"

"--but here I am, on Devil's Night of all things, swinging from a boat house--"

"Ship repair."

"--ceiling going on midnight the night before Halloween--" 

Diefenbaker yipped at Fraser. 

"Forgive me," Fraser snapped, "but this rope is tougher than it might appear. If you think you can do better--"

Dief snorted, and trotted off to sniff the perimeter. 

Fraser scolded after him, "Oh, do not give me that tired excuse about you not having opposable thumbs!"

"--and I kept remembering this one movie I accidentally saw late one Halloween night when I was nine. I couldn't sleep, probably too much candy, so I got out of bed in the middle of the night and turned on the tv real quiet, and there was this movie on with a vampire, which was great, but then there was Shirtless Guy Dangling From Meat Hook, and Scary Mutant Guy, and Knife! Slice! Whoosh! Guts! All over the floor in a big squishy pile! After that I did not sleep for three days. My mother thought I was on drugs."

"Drugs? You were nine years old."

"It was the Sixties, Fraser. My mother was convinced I was gonna get recruited by Hippies and disappear forever into a rainbow-colored bus with pot smoke and Led Zeppelin pouring out the windows."

"We didn't have many Hippies in Tuktoyaktuk," Fraser said, trying very hard not to take too deep a breath of Ray at such close quarters. Ray smelled of a mix of whiskey and cigarettes, and Ray himself, sweaty and salty and warm. It was terribly distracting. "I'm nearly through here," Fraser warned. "You might want to brace yourself. Or, or something."

Ray grinned at him suddenly. "Your pack, huh?"

"Excuse me?"

"Dief, with the knee-licking."

Fraser blushed, trying not to imagine Ray's knees, or any of Ray's other parts, and licking. "It's a wolf thing, Ray."

Then, mercifully, the last twists of hemp snapped, Ray's arms dropped forward abruptly, and he yowled, "Ow, ow, son of a bitch, that's--"

"Don't rub!" Fraser grabbed for Ray's hands, and held them in his, gently but firmly. "Just wait for the circulation to come back," he instructed.

Ray nodded, shifting from foot to foot on the cold floor. "Yeah, yeah, okay, but I would pay a lot for someone to rub my shoulders right now. Jesus, that hurts! You know, they never show this in the movies, when the hero rescues the damsel, or his sidekick, or whoever it is stuck down in the maniac's dungeon. They just cut 'em loose, and everybody skedaddles, but wow, Fraser, ow..." 

Fraser rubbed at Ray's left shoulder, the deltoid muscles lean and firm beneath Ray's skin. "Ray, are you sure you're all right? You haven't been hit on the head? Or perhaps dislocated anything?" 

"Nah, only my dignity. I'm fine, except for being kidnapped at gunpoint, and left to freeze my assets off in my skivvies. Hey, how'd you find me?" 

"That would be courtesy of your friend Edward. He happened to be looking out the front window of Wanamaker's Bar and Grill when Mr. Peligroso's henchmen overtook you and escorted you to a large white van with 'Maitlin's Ship Repair' painted on the side. To quote Edward, 'That whole menage looked the wrong kind of queer.'"

Ray regarded Fraser with an odd, hesitant expression for a moment, before concluding, "At Wanamaker's. Um, yeah, okay. Good, so Eddie called you at the consulate, instead of 911." Ray rubbed at the chill bumps along his upper arms. "Jesus. All I needed was half the 2-7 showing up here tonight."

"Whichever of Mr. Maitlin's employees to arrive first in the morning would have been treated to an eyeful, er, so to speak," Fraser deduced, "and predictably telephoned the police. I believe it was Mr. Peligroso's plan to humiliate you into declining to testify at the Petrini hearing." Fraser shrugged out of his coat and offered it to Ray.

Ray accepted it eagerly. "Thank you, thank you, best buddy! Oh, it's still all Frasery warm inside!" He hugged the coat to himself and executed a brief shimmy of joy. "Fraser, why are you taking your shirt off?" 

"I thought you might wrap this around your waist, since I can't see any evidence of your clothes. I can manage with the Henley for a while."

"What with your subcurvaceous layer of fat, and all?" Ray tied the shirt's sleeves into a knot at his hip.

Fraser smiled. "Yes. What with that." 

"Those jerks got my wallet, my damn badge, and even worse, my favorite pair of head-kickin' boots," Ray complained. "It'll take me forever to wear in a new pair, and you know Welsh is gonna give me grief over the badge. Hey, how are we getting home?" Ray blanched. "Not to beef, but please tell me you didn't drive my car!"

"I took the precaution of hiring us a cab," Fraser reassured him. "Mr. Silverstein is waiting for us outside."

Ray stared at him. "You are actually not kidding, are you."

Fraser readjusted his hat. "The meter's ticking, Ray. We ought to run along."

*****

"Halloween," Ray groused. He steered the Pontiac into a slow left turn, all the while warily eyeing the festively costumed pedestrians who still wandered the sidewalks in spite of the late hour. "When I was a kid it was fun, but these days I feel like a beat cop again, cruising for trouble."

Fraser studied the foot traffic on his side of the street. "Are you expecting any trouble in particular?"

"What I am expecting," Ray told him, turning right down a familiar boulevard, "is that the hole in that window screen in Mr. and Mrs. Kolchak's attic was more hole than screen."

Fraser deduced, "You believe that the screen was torn on purpose."

"I believe that screen was torn by something that's got ten fingers and a plan," Ray said.

"But you assured Mrs. Kolchak - and your mother - that there was nothing to worry about up in the attic."

"I told Mrs. Kolchak and my mother that there were no ghosts or ghouls up in the attic, which there was not. I told _Mister_ Kolchak that he and the missus should go see her sister on the other side of town for a nice Halloween sleepover tonight."

"Someone once told me," Fraser scolded good-naturedly, "that partners means sharing."

Ray shrugged and flashed him a quick grin. "I found something weird while me and the bat were doing the cha-cha in there. I wasn't sure yet what I was looking at, so I had to talk to my Nana first."

"Your--oh, your grandmother?"

"My mom's grandma, Nana Helena. Okay, here we go."

Ray parked two houses down the street from the Kolchak home, and he and Fraser closed the car doors quietly behind them. "Mr. Kolchak gave me his spare key. C'mon, let's see if we can catch us some goblins."

"But Ray, you just said there are no--"

"Don't make me hurt you, Fraser."

Fraser snickered. "It might interest you to know," he told Ray, as they walked up the Kolchaks' front path, "that Ray Vecchio was never a great admirer of Halloween."

"Oh yeah?" Ray flashed a knowing smile at him. "Bet I can guess why."

"He claimed, and I quote, 'It makes my teeth hurt, knowing I could be looking at a guy in a mummy costume, and there's some murderer staring back at me, walking around bold as fuckin' brass and _laughing,_ 'cause there I am with a gun and a badge, and I got no clue.'"

Ray nodded. "Vecchio and I are as one on that point, my friend."

Fraser argued amiably, "I like the costumes."

"Not a lot of sequins around the Northern Areas, huh?"

"They look a little strange paired with musk ox hide, Ray."

Ray stopped halfway up the attic stairs. "You just made that up."

Fraser beamed at him. "You told me you were tired of Inuit Death Stories."

Ray led Fraser toward the part of the Kolchaks' attic where he had done battle with the fishing rod. He shone his flashlight toward a cleared space on the floor where Fraser could make out, directly below the eastern window of the Kolchak's attic, an image scratched in the bare wood of the floor. "Get a look at that." 

Fraser studied the lines of the drawing and looked up at Ray, who stood illuminated strangely in the dull light. "I'm fairly certain that a magic circle generally contains a pentagram, not a Star of David."

Ray smirked, "No kidding? Look here." He shifted the beam of his flashlight toward one edge of the magic circle. There lay a small doll, a little taller than the full length of Fraser's hand. It had been fashioned of straw and clad in a colorful peasant dress, and had long black hair probably, Fraser surmised, cut from the tresses of a Halloween wig.

"Topienie Marzanny," Ray pronounced. "The drowning of Marzanna." 

"Drowning?" Fraser wondered, "Who is Marzanna, and what could she possibly have done to deserve such a fate?"

"Marzanna's an old goddess, way back - Polish, Czech, all those folks who lived in Eastern Europe," Ray explained. "Marzanna, Morena. Pick a name. She was the goddess of death, or the goddess of winter. In some stories she killed little kids in the night, in others she protected 'em." Ray shrugged. "You ask six Polish grandmas, you'll get six different answers. Anyway, my Nana Helena told me when she was a kid back in Poland, every March they'd make these dolls out of straw and dress 'em up all fancy, and then light 'em on fire and throw 'em into the lake, as a way of saying goodbye to the winter, and hello to the spring.""

"But it's October," Fraser pointed out.

"Yeah, well, they used to offer her grain in the fall, hoping for a good harvest."

"I see. Hence the orange candles, rather than black. Does Topienie Marzanna require a hexagram?"

"No, Fraser, Marzanna does not require any kind of grams. What we've got here are some dumb kids who've mixed up their magic and got it into their heads to make an offering to Marzanna, goddess of the winter, at midnight on Halloween."

Fraser scratched at one eyebrow. "Hoping for a fruitful harvest?"

Ray snorted. "Let's hope not."

Fraser blushed. "Ah. Yes." He cleared his throat. "Still. Setting either candles or straw dolls alight in this attic, for whatever reason, would be extremely ill-advised. The entire space is packed floor to ceiling with what amounts to dry kindling. I wonder why they chose the Kolchak home? Older neighborhoods like this one are replete with attics." 

He elbowed aside an encroaching ceramic lamp in the shape of an extremely pink swan with a broken beak. Its shiny black eye regarded him resentfully in the unsteady light. "Surely they might have found one less cluttered?"

Ray swung the beam of his flashlight toward the open window at the western end of the attic. "You didn't notice that humongous old wisteria vine growing up the wall underneath that west window? You're losing your touch there, buddy."

"The window with the broken screen," Fraser recalled, "where the bat strayed in. So this is merely the attic with the most convenient entrance. I had assumed the fault lay with curious raccoons. They're quite fond of attics."

"Raccoons. Teenagers. Take your pick. I climbed into plenty of places I had no business when I was a kid, Benton my friend. Didn't you?"

Fraser hedged, "The arctic tundra tends to be flat and sparsely populated, Ray."

Ray grinned at him, feral and painfully attractive. "Yeah, you stick to that story. C'mon, let's make with the lurking. It's just after 11:00. Shouldn't be long, now."

At 11:47 by Fraser's reckoning he heard a rustling outside under the window and the sound of more than one someone climbing the wisteria vine. There were a few minutes of muffled conversation, and then a slender, feminine figure carrying what appeared to be a gallon jug of the sort common in the dairy section of the supermarket slipped over the window sill and into the darkened attic. Fraser assumed that the jug carried water tonight rather than milk. This first intruder was followed by the head and shoulders of a second figure, who handed up a large bundle. The young woman secured it under one arm and made way for her companion. The second figure, taller, and broader of shoulder, carried a large satchel, or perhaps gym bag. It slipped sideways to thud hollowly against the window frame.

Fraser and Ray waited until they had made their way carefully across the attic and into the small cleared space under the window. The moon had just cleared the horizon, rising large, and nearly full. Pale yellow light cast the fresh scars on the floor into sharp shadows.

The young woman set the gallon jug on a nearby box, and the soft bundle nearby. The young man handed her the satchel, from which she pulled a large, gleaming stock pot. "Here," she instructed her companion, "put the pot in the middle of the circle, and fill it with the water. I'll light the candles."

Ray clicked his flashlight on. "I don't think so." His glasses reflected the flashlight's gleam like owls' eyes.

The youth screeched, flailed, and fell backward over an overflowing box of decrepit sporting equipment as he tried to turn and run while at the same time keeping his eye on Ray. 

"Good evening," Fraser intoned. If he sounded just a little bit like Bela Lugosi, that was merely a coincidence.

The young woman brandished the empty stock pot at Ray. "Back off! I know kung-fu!"

"Sure you do. And I know Wong Foo, thanks for everything." Ray proffered his badge, which gleamed in the flicker of three flashlights. "Chicago PD. Get a grip there, kid, we're not serial killers. Not that I haven't been tempted."

Fraser smiled reassuringly. "Constable Benton Fraser, Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Are you all right? You took a bit of a tumble there, young fellow."

The young man untangled his ankles from an old field hockey stick. "I--fine--Mountie? Uniform?"

"He didn't want to get it dusty," Ray explained dryly. "Look, you two, what the hell did you think you were gonna do up here, besides burn down the whole place with the two of you in it? And do not try to tell me you were just up here to read poetry by moonlight, what with the very nice view from someone else's house which does not belong to you in any way shape or legalness."

"Um," the girl said. She bit her lip and shrugged.

Ray peered at her in the dark. "Lisa Kozlowski, and Theodore Walczak. I might have known."

Lisa squeaked, "How do you know--Ray Kowalski?"

Theodore wailed, "That's it, Lees! We're goin' up the river, and your dad's gonna have me shanked in prison!"

Lisa insisted to Ray, "You can not tell my dad! We were not gonna do anything, um, you know..."

"Hinky?" Ray hinted.

"Untoward?" Fraser suggested.

"Neither of that, none of those," Theodore promised wildly.

 _"Shenanigans?"_ Fraser offered smoothly. 

Theodore windmilled again as he tripped over a rockerless rocking horse in the dark. "No shenanigans! I swear!"

"He sounds very sincere," Fraser said to Ray.

"I am completely sincere," Theodore babbled. "I would not dream of shenanigans! Or untowardness, or anything like that!"

Ray snorted. "You're sixteen years old. You're always thinking of anything like that." He patted the large, soft bundle, which looked to Fraser suspiciously like a sleeping bag. "What's this for?"

"Awp," Theodore managed, while apparently attempting to swallow his own Adam's apple.

"Moon-gazing," Lisa asserted.

Ray let out a bark of laughter. "Yeah, I bet there'd be moon-gazing all over the place. What we got here is vandalism, trespassing, breaking and entering, reckless endangerment, and scaring of old people."

"They _knew?_ "

"They thought you were rabid vampires," Ray scolded. "Now listen. I will not tell your folks..."

Limp with relief, Theodore sagged against what appeared to be a large parrot cage filled with a variety of old cheerleader uniforms. Fraser tried to remember precisely how many daughters the Kolchaks had raised. He believed six, all of their names beginning with the letter J.

"...but you are going to confess, you dig?"

Lisa groaned, "I hate confession! Father Ambrose always smells like oven cleaner."

"Not _to confession,_ you goof, I mean you are going to confess all of this to the Kolchaks."

"Oh God," Theodore moaned, and sagged further toward the dusty floor.

Fraser considered offering him some of the water meant for drowning the Marzanna.

"And you will apologize, and pay for a new window screen, and never, ever pull such a dumb stunt again, or I will tell _my_ mother, and you know what that means."

Lisa squeaked, "All over Saint Elias women's choir in less that twenty minutes. Aw, jeez, Ray, that's just cruel!"

"Hey." Ray took a step forward and made sure Lisa looked him in the eyes. "Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. Listen to me. You are young and cute and mostly pretty smart, and in spite of him being a blithering doofus I got nothing against your Theo there. I do not enjoy the thought of either of you dying a horrible, fiery death because you thought six candles in a crowded attic would be fuckin' _romantic._ You understand?"

Lisa gulped and nodded at Ray. "Yeah," she said quietly. "I get it."

"Not to mention," Fraser went ahead and mentioned, "that you'd probably kill the Kolchaks along with yourselves."

"Oh shit," Theo whimpered. "I didn't... We just thought... Lees, will I be less of a man in your eyes if I say I'd really like to go home to my mother now?"

"Nah," Lisa promised comfortingly. She reached a slender hand out for him. "Ray, can we go now if we promise to talk to the Kolchaks tomorrow?"

Ray nodded. "Scoot. Go home and eat candy." He tossed the sleeping bag at Theodore as Lisa gathered the cooking pot and the candles into the other bag. "Back down the tree there, I don't want your dusty footprints all over Mrs. Kolchak's carpets. And remember to brush your teeth!"

Fraser watched the young couple make their way past the detritus of the Kolchaks' attic, and scramble back down the big wisteria vine. "It was very kind of you to let them off with a warning, Ray. Do you think they've actually learned their lesson?"

Ray laughed. "Oh, sure. At least maybe the next stupid thing they do won't involve the fire department. Hey look, Lisa forgot her doll."

Fraser bent to pick up the little doll, noting, "See here Ray, young Lisa drew a charming face for the Marzanna." He pouted a little. "How can you set that on fire, when it's smiling at you?"

Ray peered past Fraser's shoulder at the pink smile and blue eyes drawn in felt tip pen. "You could make a wish." 

"Do I have to set the doll on fire afterward for it come true?"

Ray grinned at him, close and warm. "Nah, but you got to keep it between you and the Marzanna. No telling."

Ray turned toward the open west window, through which Lisa and Theodore had made their egress. He asked softly, "Hey Frase... you ever miss bein' in love? You know, just letting yourself go with it, walk right over the edge, damn the torpedoes."

Fraser admitted, "I do miss the ease with which young people seem to take that leap. I miss it rather keenly, in fact."

"Me too." Ray scrubbed at the back of his neck. "The thing is, see..." He paced across the small space, grimacing nervously. "See, the thing is..." He stopped across the hexagram from Fraser and huffed, "Are you _absolutely_ sure about that vampire bat thing you said, 'cause lately..."

Fraser wondered how Ray had made the transition from young love to vampirism, but he'd become accustomed by now to the mercurial way Ray thought through a problem. "I am absolutely positive about the vampire bat thing, Ray. In addition I am quite certain that one cannot be turned into a vampire by being stuck with an old fish hook." He allowed, "Now, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, perhaps."

"Oh, ha. Very amusing." Ray frowned at the floor. "You're gonna think I'm nuts."

"I already think you're nuts. I remain fond of you, nonetheless."

"Fond?"

"Very," Fraser confirmed.

Ray took a deep breath, then blurted out, "The thing is, last couple of days I keep thinking about biting you."

Fraser blinked at him. "You don't actually want to drink my blood, do you?"

"Ewww! No! No, I do not want to drink your blood!" Ray cringed. "Jeez. It's just... You know, right, about Wanamaker's Bar?" 

Fraser licked his lower lip. "I may have stopped by, briefly, to, um, check for further witnesses to your kidnapping."

"You've figured out what kind of a bar that is, then." Ray rubbed nervously at the back of his neck. 

"I know that men generally don't go there to make the acquaintance of ladies." Fraser grimaced, correcting, "I mean, women. Companions of the female persuasion."

"I wasn't just passing by on the sidewalk, okay? Peligroso's guys got me walking out of the bar." Ray shifted his balance subtly from foot to foot, a fight or flight stance.

Fraser took a long, steadying breath, gently slipped the Marzanna doll into his coat pocket, and offered, "Ray, would you like to bite my neck?"

Ray's smile was swift and stunning. "I wanna bite you all over, Fraser, I wanna lick you and--" He wrinkled his nose. "But not in an attic."

"I have an apartment!" Fraser yipped, throwing dignity to the winds in favor of the sheer lust bubbling through his veins.

"Mine is closer," Ray suggested eagerly, drifting toward the attic door.

Fraser held out his hand imperiously. "Give me your phone. I'll call Mr. Kolchak and let him know all is well." He snatched Ray's cell phone from his hand, and grabbed a fistful of the front of Ray's jacket, growling, "You will drive very quickly!"

Ray laughed and reeled Fraser in closer. Ray smelled like peppermint gum. "What if my reckless driving endangers a festively costumed pedestrian?"

"Out at this hour?" Fraser shrugged, "It's probably a murderer."

 

\--#--


End file.
